Re: Question about MARCXML to Models transformation

I think Ross makes an important point.

The reality is the collection of information assets 'out there'.

The data is the collection of representational assertions about those
assets.

The model is an abstraction that brings the reality and the data together in
ways that meet a set of functional requirements.

When the characteristics of the model start driving unnatural,
bending-over-backwards sort of actions or data structures, it makes me
uneasy about whats going on, and one of the side effects is what Ross
alludes to - hidden or unanticipated costs in maintaining data structures
that flow from the model, rather than the data.

I wish I could be more specific.. its a feeling of unease that is hard to
articulate clearly

stu


On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Ross Singer <ross.singer@talis.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Young,Jeff (OR) <jyoung@oclc.org> wrote:
>
>> One way to punt on this problem would be to treat the relationship between
>> W&M as 1-to-1 for now (80/20 rule). This would create some alias URIs for
>> Expressions and possibly conflate a few, but we could always come in later
>> and use owl:sameAs to reconcile the aliases and improve the data mining to
>> split those we conflate.
>>
>
> I'll probably be outnumbered on this, but I begin to feel somewhat
> uncomfortable to assigning massive amounts of URIs for things in the absence
> of knowing what they are.  This is further compounded by the fact that
> they're being created because we have so little data to work with.
>
> I can't help but feel there are lots of hidden costs here (persistence of
> the deprecated "stub" URIs, being one, but even just the general fact that
> you need to dereference -- and store -- an extra, not-terribly-valuable, URI
> simply to get a CBD of the Manifestation), but I also, personally, feel it's
> significantly easier to add data later, when we know with some more
> confidence what it is we're describing, than it is to edit.  Especially at
> scale.
>
> Do others perceive this to be an issue?
>
> -Ross.
>